Clinical notes retrieved from the files of the late Jinseng Park:
In about 1989, a guy paid a little boy for sex. The currency the guy used was the only currency that carried any worth in the little boy’s world. Sports cards.
This bad guy didn’t get punished for this particular crime but he went on to get arrested for separate but similar crimes and lived most of his days in prison. His life did not add up to anything so we can forget about this guy.
The little boy, the victim however, he had a story.
For years and years, the little boy repressed the memories of the sex with the guy. He didn’t spend time trying to remember the specifics. His family and friends either did not know about this abuse or they chose to pretend it never happened. The little boy didn’t understand why or do anything but blame himself when he developed a problem with sex.
By the fourth grade the little boy had an addiction to pornography. By 10th grade, he had manic periods where he couldn’t get going on anything unless he masturbated first. In his early twenties, he got married to a toxic woman who had similar problems. Eventually, he started to visit prostitutes. Despite all these issues, this grown up little boy was genuinely kind and generous. He maintained an outward appearance of success.
The grown up little boy lived a double life. One of the lives was so filled with so much shame that he could not bare it. He pledged to clean up his act. And he did. He quit pornography, masturbation, and sex all together and was living a sober Christian life by his early thirties.
However, even after getting clean, the grown up little boy’s life fell completely apart by his late thirties.
He lost his job, his marriage, and all his friends. All gone due to circumstances that had nothing directly to do with his past sex problems.
Alone and desperate, the grown up little boy went all in on figuring out how it all made sense.
He started to visit prostitutes again but now he insisted on talking to them and spending time with them. He was not interested in their bodies as much as he was interested in their stories. He found that many of the prostitutes had great hearts. The prostitutes did not like letting him become a meaningful part of their world. It interfered with their ability to be professional in their jobs. They couldn’t afford to expect real relationships with clients.
That all changed when the grown up little boy met a Thai woman working in the sex trade. She was a on a similar journey as the grown up little boy. She was also trying to gain a deep understanding of the world.
You see, after years of therapy and teasing out the details from his memory, the grown up little boy understood that he did not have complete free will, however; it was certainly his conscious choices that put his little boy self in that guy’s basement taking the sports cards in exchange for oral and anal sex. This Thai woman also realized that she was dealt a shitty hand in a fucked up game but it was her choices that got her into her mess and she had no choice but to learn how to play her hand. She understood that she signed up for the debt that came with the plastic surgery. She understood that the people who offered to cover her plastic surgery were wolves and they used that debt to pull her into serving in their brothels.
The grown up little boy told his story to the Thai woman and she understood. She empathized. No fake therapist bull shit. No lip service or fake tears from someone imagining how bad it must have been for the little boy.
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For a bit, after meeting the Thai woman, the grown up little boy was confused. He thought he loved the Thai woman. But it was better than that. His connection with this woman helped him turn a corner and for the first time, his heart started opening up to love other people. And the initial burst of love that came out of the grown up little boy’s heart found a landing spot with the Thai woman. After she rejected him, he went back to the lab and soon started realizing it wasn't love he had for the Thai woman, no it was his heart opening again learning how to love other people, living creatures. Desiring to share warmth.
Of course, the grown up little boy found that the new love and beauty that he was able to experience came with a reciprocating appreciation for hate and ugliness. However, he found new courage in his chest. He saw both the extremes of light and darkness everywhere and wasn’t afraid of it. He didn’t desire to fix any of it. No efforts to paint over pain with a smile. No efforts to turn down the volume on the colors of a heart filling moment calling for a dance.
The grown up little boy once again quit doing unhealthy sex stuff but this time it was not an exercise of cold turkey torture. He found when he looked at pornography, he saw the pain in the people’s eyes. It wasn’t ugly. He didn’t want to run away from it or hide it. It wasn’t shameful. He just didn’t get pleasure out of looking at the pain so he didn’t do any more searches for it.
The grown up little boy decided that he would rebuild his network of friends and he wanted all new relationships to be predicated on honesty. He recognized many people would exercise their right to avoid getting mixed up in his type of life.
The grown up little boy started to make friends with societies cast aways. Many of his closest contacts were in the sex trade.
Don’t misunderstand this. He did not condone toxic sex. He was disgusted by the idea of using and abusing others for carnal pleasure. He merely wanted to be around people who understood the nasty power that sex can have if you don’t respect its power. He wanted to be around people who admitted that biological animal urges were driving many decisions. Even though the human world had become so clean and civilized, this only meant that the sexual stuff driving us was being represented in more and more nuanced ways.
The grown up little boy made a plan. He would fix his life, from the bottom up, working his way through the Maslow Hierarchy of Needs. He worried though, that once he got to the relationship part of the pyramid, the only person compatible to him would be a prostitute. It wasn’t a big worry though, once a connection was made, he reassured himself, it would be with someone who had his same balanced appreciation for both the light and darkness in the world.
The grown up little boy made me worry when he decided to stop coming to therapy sessions and go out on his own to test his theories.
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I am so proud of this patient. For two years, he came to all our scheduled weekly meetings, always fifteen minutes early. He read every book I recommended, took notes, watched complimentary lectures, and discussed what he learned about himself and others with so much learned passion.
At first, I diagnosed his eagerness to please, his charisma, his intelligence... I misdiagnosed it as a form of sociopathic behavior. Boy was I wrong. I dare to say, maybe it was... I can’t believe I’m saying this, it was some sort of path to enlightenment. I have to make a note, that I am laughing at myself as I write these words. So, yes, LOL.
Four years since our last session together, I am happy to report, this grown up little boy is a healthy functioning adult man with a career as a scientist, a house, a new wife, a garden, and some pets. He coaches youth sports and is a volunteer at the local homeless shelter. He is also a published author. Although I don’t care for his genre of writing, adult sexual situations and conspiracy theories, I appreciate that his stories are ultimately ones of redemption and forgiveness.
He sends me a Christmas card every year and I always read it with tears in my eyes. I can’t help but say, being a small part of his growth and recovery from childhood trauma is the highlight of my professional career.
Hell, at some point I became his student. Teaching me to not pass judgement on things I don’t understand.
Part of me still can’t believe that he is so content married to a former porn star but I guess that’s the way it had to be. And with his black belt in jujitsu, I’m not the only one who would be a fool to say something negative about the way he chooses to be happy.